Quantification of mesh induced anisotropy effects in the phase-field method.

Phase-field modelling is one of the most powerful techniques currently available for the simulation from first principles the time dependant evolution of complex solidification microstructures. However, unless care is taken the computational mesh used to solve the set of partial differential equations that result from the phase-field formulation of the solidification problem may introduce a stray, or implicit, anisotropy, which would be highly undesirable in quantitative calculations. In this paper we quantify this effect as a function of various computational parameters and subsequently suggest techniques for mitigating the effect of this stray anisotropy.